Television (TV) and the Internet are merging. Various frameworks such as the Widget Channel bring rich Internet experiences to TV viewers. For PC Internet browsing, a viewer's Internet access activities may be captured via cookies, allowing a customization and personalization of a viewer's PC Internet experience based on the viewer's interests. Thus, for web browser cookies, a service provider typically implements a cookie, which is a token stored on a viewer's platform to track usage of that particular service (and possibly of related services), and to personalize such service for the viewer. Cookies can accumulate information about use of the particular service over time, allowing the service to be personalized. However, because Internet TV browsing is done only via service-specific applications, the service access history or activities are not captured. The unavailability of information relating to service access history or activities makes it difficult for service providers to customize and personalize the TV service delivery experience on a connected TV/device.
TV viewing habits and/or commercial ratings data is typically collected and analyzed in an offline fashion by media research companies such as the Nielsen Company, using specialized equipment such as a “Home Unit” connected to a TV and installed in limited sets of selected households. There is no definite technique to measure if a program, such as content or an ad, was actually watched by a viewer. As things currently stand, not only is there a significant delay between the viewing time of a certain program and a time when information about that viewing time is available to content providers and advertisers, that information is valid only for the limited number of selected households installed with the specialized equipment—typically about 0.02% of the total TV households in the US).
U.S. Pat. No. 6,670,974 describes a solution for tracking and displaying information regarding platform usage over time in an interactive manner. This patent focuses on determining an association of platform usage patterns over time, and is unrelated to a viewer's TV content watching pattern.
As set forth in http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/tuning-in-to-tv-data.html regarding Google TV, the set top box (STB) may be configured to send data to a server for processing, the data including information on proof of play of ads by the STB. A report is generated offline that describes the total number of viewers tuned to a given channel on a per-second basis.
As set forth in U.S. Published Patent Application 20080235348, a viewer's channel changes may be captured on a STB, and a set of timers may be used to determine which set of programs the viewer watched. The processing considers whether the viewer has spent enough time on a specific channel to have been considered watching rather than merely surfing. The result is a list of the viewer's viewing history, which can be delivered remotely and delivered both visually and audibly to the viewer.
Additionally, as set forth in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TiVo, the prior art tracks a viewer's viewing habits through monitoring remote key presses such as fast forwarding through a program or replaying a program.
To date, however, no solution exists for providing personalization of a viewer's service access history or activities with respect to Internet TV browsing, for example on a real-time basis.
It will be appreciated that for simplicity and clarity of illustration, elements illustrated in the figures have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements are exaggerated relative to other elements for clarity. Further, where considered appropriate, reference numerals have been repeated among the figures to indicate corresponding or analogous elements.